3 posts categorized "Apps"

Entry By Jason Brick

Running your small business can feel like working in a vacuum. You keep working your plans, but lack the feedback and example of other players in the game. This is doubly true of mobile marketing -- a promotional field new enough that there isn't a strong data infrastructure to which you can compare your results.

Industry will catch up in good time. Meanwhile, you can draw inspiration from these three wildly successful mobile initiatives:

Marks and Spencer

British retailer M&S decided in 2010 to take the mobile plunge. Instead of going with a simple app or SMS marketing campaign, they opted to design a mobile portal for retail purchases direct from customers' mobile devices. In less than two years, Marks and Spenser rose to be the number one ranking mobile retailer in the world. Not only are they successfully selling to mobile customers, but they're selling items not normally purchased electronically -- including furniture and large-screen plasma televisions.

Expert analysis identifies three key characteristics behind Marks & Spenser's success:

• A dedicated mobile site -- incoming connections to their website identify the kind of device that will view their page. Mobile devices are routed to an experience optimized for those devices.
• Simple programming for a fast load time -- just over half the time of the average 10-second load for mobile retail.
• Reliable purchasing leading to a 100 percent success rate on attempts to buy. Retailers average about 93 percent -- but losing seven percent of sales can make a big difference.

Pontiac G6

In a campaign to raise awareness, Pontiac offered a place in a drawing for $1,000,000 every time somebody texted a photo of a G6 they found in the field. Responses were immediate and impressive. Although Pontiac hasn't released exact numbers, sales for the year of the promotion numbered over 120,000 luxury cars -- as compared to only 16,000 for the year before.

The Pontiac campaign is an excellent example of eliciting a response from potential clients. It got people who may only have been interested in the prize keep a lookout for the product, raising brand awareness across multiple markets.

The keys to this success included:

• Solid integration of print and broadcast media with the mobile response campaign.
• A compelling call to action that required no immediate outlay of cash from potential responders.
• Simple interaction mechanic -- snapping a photo and sending it to a widely advertised email address.

Nike

In a desperate attempt to inform the remaining three people in the world who don't know what Nike sells, the sports apparel giant has embraced the mobile marketing world with a series of apps. In some cases partnered directly with Apple for the iPod, these fitness apps, like MyCoach, help users plan and execute fitness training regimens. Nike coupled this with real-time response campaigns like their Nike ID initiative in Times Square.

Although they didn't release specific numbers about the campaign's success, their mobile marketing frequently leads lists of the most successful mobile marketing campaigns to date.

Nike's success with their mobile marketing relied upon:

• Multiple mobile platforms and styles, to appeal to a wide general audience.
• Giving potential customers tools that help them use the merchandise they sell.
• Pushing information about the new campaigns through more traditional media sources.

McAfee is reporting a huge spike in Android malware. As you might have guessed iOS is largely unaffected:

Malware on Android is growing rapidly enough that it's now by far the most targeted platform, McAfee said in a new study (below). The number of viruses, trojans, and other rogue pieces of code aimed at Google's platform shot up 76 percent this past spring to reach 44. While small compared to Windows, it was three times the volume of the one-time leader, Java ME, which was at 14.

...

Apple, meanwhile, remained unaffected, with no active malware that could attack a stock iPhone. The only known recorded instances so far have been four attacks on jailbroken devices that were all variants of each other. Of the major platforms, only the outgoing and much smaller webOS had the same perfect track record.

And for those of you installing 'SMS' apps, please be careful:

Some of the examples of Android malware, such as Smsmecap and Toplank, are masquerading as legitimate apps. Many of them are badged as "crimeware" that tries to profit off the user by sending premium rate text messages and effectively stealing the target's money. On other platforms, like the BlackBerry and Symbian, paid SMS attacks have also appeared in smaller volumes.

Read more at Electronista.

One of the keys to the success of the iOS App Store (iPhone / iPad / iPod Touch) is the seamless nature of billing. Until now the lack of convenient billing has held back the Android Marketplace. AT&T has just announced that like T-Mobile they will be offering a soluton to this problem:

The Android Market has long been a source of frustration for Android users - it seems so much simpler to find and buy apps for the iPhone. With that in mind, a number of improvements have been announced recently by Android in order to help make both finding and purchasing apps easier.

Add to that list now, AT&T Direct Carrier Billing for those Android folks (obviously) on the AT&T network. This means apps you purchase can be billed to your phone bill, instead of your having to pull out a credit card.

Read more at ReadWrite Web, including info from Android's Developer Ecosystem Chief.